PayPal is one of the first users by extending its global payments platform, PayPal X, into the cloud and working with the IBM Cloud Labs to allow its ecosystem of developers to quickly monetize new applications developed and made available via smart phones.

Mr Editor Bossman at Computerworld NZ, The Roboneill, sent a link to the official YouTube blog with a rather interesting entry by Zahavah Levine, the video hoster's chief legal counsel. Have a read of it all, but the bit quoted below sticks out: For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube. Despite that, Viacom continues to insist that YouTube didn't do enough to keep copyrighted material off its site. That by itself is a bizarre notion, because as Levine says, with very few exceptions, all material on YouTube is copyrighted the moment it's created. The above shows that there needs to be some safeguards against copyright abuse by rights holders - probably more so than against "pirates" in fact. Technorati Tags

With all this talk about "social media" and "be part of the conversation" I see some New Zealand companies still don't "get it". Instead of providing crappy services, or even still make their services better by listening to feedback provided by their (ex) customers they instead decide to go and threat with a defamation lawsuit anyone who dares point out their low quality services. Worse still, it's a company dealing in the online world. I can't even mention their name here otherwise I might get sued too. This is the problem with defamation laws in New Zealand... Even if you are posting about something with accurate facts you still risk getting sued. Unbelievable. These idiots should go read the Cluetrain Manifesto, even if ten years too late.

Microsoft releases first platform preview for Windows Internet Explorer 9, highlights commitments to jQuery and OData.

Version 2.0 of the PayPal Send Money app gives PayPal and iPhone customers around the world secure mobile access to their money and convenient features for everyday life, including Bump money transfers, Split Check and Collect Money.

The new eX5 servers improve the economics of operating enterprise-sized, x86-based systems and offer dramatically more scalable, workload-tuned computing on the x86 platform.

Company introduces X25-V SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) at US$125 entry price point, for value netbooks or as boot drive for dual-drive SSD/HDD desktops.

The government has finalised its plans for rural telecommunications with Cabinet yesterday signing off on proposals for the roll out of high speed broadband in rural areas and the reform of the Telecommunications Service Obligations (TSO).

If you're involved in any capacity with software development, or want to understand more about cloud computing, this is a half-day event not to be missed. Come along to the official New Zealand launch of Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Azure. Two international experts, Sam Guckenheimer and David Chappell will deliver two keynote sessions. Plus, to mark the occasion, Microsoft is producing a cool retro t-shirt for all attendees, and there are also some great prizes to be won! Best of all, the event is free to attend! Visual Studio 2010 Keynote The event kicks off with the official New Zealand launch of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. The launch of Visual Studio 2010 will help accelerate everything you do, from design to development to deployment. Hear how Visual Studio 2010 helps you find nasty bugs, get better insight into how your project is running, and work better with other people on your team. The keynote presenter is Microsoft's Sam Guckenheimer, author of Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. Sam is the Group Product Planner for the Microsoft Visual Studio product line. In this capacity, he acts as chief customer advocate, responsible for the end-to-end external design of the next releases of these products. Windows Azure Keynote Cloud computing looks like the biggest change to hit our industry in many years. The advent of cheap, scalable computing power available over the Internet will affect almost everybody who works in IT

Every manufacturer boasts their product as being superior to all others.  When I received an invite to see what Panasonic was bringing to 3D I was a little sceptical at all the hype, having just seen Sony's offerings.  One line in the invitation email however did catch my attention: Winner of Best in Show at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year. Impressive. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so last Monday I visited Panasonic HQ to see what made this TV so special. Brand new and freshly delivered from the States, we were about to start watching the Panasonic TC-P50VT25 - a 50" plasma (note it's not a LCD) screen that was marketed to give us an experience superior to that of watching Avatar at the cinemas.  So, with a handful of other tech enthusiasts, the lights were dimmed in the board room, we donned our futuristic glasses and the demonstration began. Powered by a Panasonic BluRay player (using HDMI standard v1.4) we were able to see a variety of 3D demo videos, one of which was the Beach Volleyball Tour held at Mt Maunganui.  The colours were crisp and bright, and 3D made watching the volleyball a new experience; some of the shots made it seem as though the ball was passing very close as it bounced out of shot. I am looking forward to broadcasters adoption of 3D channels, as live sport in 3D is as close as you can get without actually being there. Gaming is another application that looks much better in 3D.  We watc

This will make the Wellington ACTA negotiations more exciting - the European Parliament has asked to have full access to ACTA documents, and wants this to be granted to the public too. Furthermore, the ACTA talks should be limited to counterfeiting, include developing and emerging countries (and not just the rich ones), plus, and this is important, they must not be used to limit access to cheap and safe medicines. That last part is often forgotten in the furore around ACTA, and it's hugely important for people everywhere, including New Zealand. On the Internet side of things, no "three-strikes" rules to be imposed; only the courts can order that people's Internet access is cut off, as anything else would violate their fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and privacy. No border searches and confiscations without warrants of laptops, mobile phones and MP3 players by customs to be introduced either. Interestingly enough, the whole ACTA circus seems to be conducted without any mandate from the European Parliament, which threatens to go to the Court of Justice unless its demands are met before the meeting in Wellington. We'll see if the different countries involved in the ACTA talks, including New Zealand, can ignore the European Parliament, but its resolution is the strongest message so far to them that they must engage with the public and not ride rough-shod over their rights.   Link to the full text of the European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2010 on the

Further details have just been released by Apple on how the 3G service will work on the iPad in the U.S. and it represents a paradigm change in mobile network usage. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that with the iPad Apple has effectively become a data MVNO (mobile virtual network operator), at least in the U.S. Whether they take a cut or not on the data plan they are managing the overall experience in a very elegant way from the users' perspective. The 3G service becomes part of the 'Apple' experience rather than an iPad on AT&T.We already knew that there would not be any contracts on the data bundles meaning that AT&T will not be subsidising these devices to reduce the device cost and lock in customers. That's OK for AT&T given they are the only network supporting Apple products in the U.S. We also knew the pricing - US$14.99 for 250MB (OK) and US$29.99 for Unlimited (awesome!). I think we are all interested to see if 'Unlimited' will have some sort of cap at say 5 or 10GB.But what's really new is how the user interacts with their 3G service. All functions (activating, payment, changing plans, deactivating) are managed from the iPad itself using a 3G manager application. You also get usage stats on how much data you have left if you have the 250MB bundle and pro-active usage alerts - excellent!These functions must have quite a strong tie-in to the network operator to enable payment, provision the service and extract these usage details. So

Will the NZ$900 million Pacific Fibre cable mooted by messieurs Drury, Morgan, Tindall, Rushworth, Humphrey and Wiggs succeed? Certainly, the list of founders is impressive with everyone on it not only having an understanding of why Big Fat Pipes with Low Latency are a good thing, but they also have real incentives for the Pacific Fibre cable to succeed - Rod Drury and Sam Morgan especially, with their Internet-based businesses depending on good networks. John Humphrey is a satellite and cable guy of long standing that I met at the Shin Sat IPstar launch way too many years ago (and, I ended up with a huge dish on my roof as proof that it was indeed possible to deliver decent broadband via birds high up in the sky). Mark Rushworth and Lance Wiggs get what the Internet is about, and having Stephen Tindall onboard isn't going to hurt Pacific Fibre in the slightest. Of course, having lots of well-known names onboard doesn't equate success but Pacific Fibre is launching into a market that's difficult to satiate at the moment. It's almost as if you need to dimension networks according to the capacities of their computers' storage and interface speeds - you need to get as close as possible to those two factors to keep customers happy. The 5.12 Terabits per second that the Pacific Fibre cable is supposed to launch with probably isn't that much over the next decade or so, and it's good to see a 12 Tbit/s upgrade has been factored in. Having lots of bandwidth for large video, audio,

Aim is unlimited high speed broadband for New Zealand and Australia.

Advanced platform designed to deliver video, mobile and data center/cloud services with high performance.

PublicACTA is being held the weekend before the next round of ACTA negotiations in Wellington, 12-16 April 2010.

It's all about money.Ask any journalist how to get to the source of any story and they'll tell you: follow the money.So, the options before the Minister of Communications are: 1: Accept the recommendation of the Commerce Commission.2: Reject the recommendation of the Commerce Commission.3: Send back the recommendation for more working. The recommendation the Commission has put forward is to accept the Undertakings offered by Telecom and Vodafone. Unusually there is a comment from one of the three Commissioners objecting to the result, but that’s neither here nor there: the recommendation is to accept the offers.Why has the Commission done that? It’s simple: follow the money.Here are the alternatives – Undertakings kicking in October 1 this year delivering savings to the industry (more on that below) immediately of around 40% versus sending the report back for more work and hopefully getting a changed recommendation to regulate, coming into effect in about 18 months to two years’ time.The difference between savings in the two options is negligible. Either you get savings from October or you get the old price for longer and potentially savings after both a reconsideration period (last one took eight months) and a full STD process (where the Commission and the industry gather to talk about the true cost of telecommunications etc which should last about a year).So the Minister has a relatively simple job ahead of him. He has to look at the certai

What we suspected for some time is real: TiVo sales in New Zealand are disappointing. The New Zealand Herald reports industry sources saying only 2,000 TiVo units were sold in New Zealand since launch, about five months ago. Hybrid TV, the local distributor, of course says this figure is not accurate but won't disclose the real numbers. At launch Hybrid TV planned to sell 120,000 TiVo within five years in New Zealand. Compare this to Sky TV, which added about 6,700 new subscribers per month for the six months to December 2009. That includes having to pay a subscribption for the services, which are free with TiVo. Now let's see the problems: TiVo is only available through Telecom New Zealand stores. People don't buy TV sets or content boxes at Telecom stores - there needs to be a shift of tectonic proportions for this to happen. People go there to buy phones. Until Hybrid TV sells TiVo through HB Hi-Fi, Dick Smith, Noel Leemings, Harvey Normam there will be no chance for them. Then TiVo offers Caspa, a legal movie download service. The service gives users unmetered download of purchased content. At 1.2GB for a two hour movie the unmetered download is a great idea. But it is only available if you use Telecom New Zealand as your ISP. Hybrid TV should offer Caspa to anyone and everyone. It will use 1.2GB of one's Internet connection to download a movie. Live with it. I do this all the time with Apple iTunes. If they can offer unmetered through Telecom New Zealand, fine. But don't

On Wednesday last week I was lucky enough to be invited to the Sony Carnival on behalf of Geekzone.  With around 50 other journalists and bloggers from a variety of different newspapers, magazines and TV shows, I was able to preview some of the new product offerings from Sony which included LCD TVs, cameras, camcorders and laptops - basically, I got to go to a gadget geek's heaven! It was held on the stage in The Civic theatre in central Auckland - massive runs of coloured fabric and multi-coloured lights hung high above centre stage, draped out to the half dozen odd displays they had setup.  Each display focused on a different range of products, with the staff dressed up as carnival workers.  Popcorn was handed out to add to the authenticity of being at the carnival - my thoughts were Sony really must have the marketing budget to go to such lengths!  I have to admit though that it was a refreshing change from the very plain (and now boring) product showcases I've seen in the past. I could write a very length post on all of the products I saw, instead I'll briefly outline some of the highlights for me from that morning: Sony Bravia HD 3D TVs - one word: WOW! I saw a very impressive demonstration of watching 3D in your own home played off Blu-ray discs.  You are still required to wear special glasses (different from those used in the theatre) which I don't feel is ideal; nevertheless, watching live Rugby or playing PS3 all in 3D is very exciting - wh

[  ] Apple iPhone[  ] Symbian [  ] Windows Mobile [  ] Windows Phone 7 [  ] Palm Web OS [X] Android [  ] Maemo Some comments: - Windows Mobile is on its way out and nothing will really turn it around anymore; - I haven't personally played with Windows Phone 7 but I don't like anything I've seen so far - Microsoft needs to give us a good surprise because my hopes are low; - By the end of the year Symbian is going to power low end smartphones, or very high end feature phones; - Palm is going to die very soon; - Maemo gives me the impression of being is a good platform, from the little I've been playing with in the last few days - but lack of software will be a problem. MeeGo (Nokia and Intel) should get a lot of attention from the companies behind the effort (Nokia and Intel) but it will take some time to happen; - Android is where things will be hot, but the fragmentation worries me - the platform may end up going the way of Windows Mobile with so many different models. What do you see in the future for smart handsets? What platform you think will go up or down, and why?

Earlier this week our CTO, Greg Amer, attended Nokia's Sydney Developer Day.  This is a great opportunity to meet other developers, hear about new initiatives that Nokia is undertaking and meet people from the Forum Nokia Asia-Pac team.Gregs top 10 take-away's from this years Developer Day were, in no particular order: Ovi stats show that in Australasia "fremium" is currently the most successful business model for mobile applications. The majority of downloads from Ovi today are from touchscreen devices.  Nokia's suggestion is that if handling touch and non-touch in the same app is a problem for you, just support touch. Ovi globally averages 12 downloads per customer. Be careful about introducing advertising into your applications.  Mobile devices are intensely personal to users and they can react strongly to intrusive advertising messages.  Advertising should absolutely handle orientation changes. Eye candy trumps features and functionality.  So does useability.  So feel free sacrifice features and functionality.  Spend money on UI and user experience. Symbian Signing will get cheaper on June 9.  We've never had a problem with Symbian Signed but it was clearly causing problems for some people and Nokia indicated it would be overhauled to become simpler still (June 9 also). The first version of Meego will be available some time in the 2nd quarter of this year, devices will follow in the 3rd or 4th quarter.  QT on Maemo/Meego has a

Earlier this week I went to Sydney to attend the Nokia Forum Developer Conference 2010, invited by Nokia Australia/New Zealand. I have to say it was my first event with Nokia and it was interesting to see 300 developers discussing the current state and future of Nokia's smartphone strategy. Present at the event were Emile Baak, Managing Director Nokia Australia and New Zealand, Purnina Kochikar, Vice Pesident Forum Nokia and Developer Community, Jan Ole Suhr, Founder of Mobileways.de and developer of Twitter client Gravitiy for Symbian. Being a developer conference the push was obviously about creating content and applications that get the customers to enjoy their devices - and buy those little bits of magic called software and content. Nokia says there are more than 1 million downloads every day from their Ovi software store, which is now available in 180 countries, with integrated mobile operator billing in partnership with 60 operators. It is obvious Nokia is pushing the QT application and UI framework, seeing it's cross platform (Symbian, Maemo, desktop) which would allow developers to scale their efforts even more. The company also said their main commitments are "increase total addressable market", "commit to open source", "combine mobile and web technologies" and "lower entry barrier to developers". Jan explained how a one man company created one of the most used Symbian software these days, #5 in the top apps in Australia. He recommended developers try their software

More than 200 million smartphone users worldwide now have Skype at their fingertips.

Microsoft will use Navizon's global location database to provide an enhanced experience to its mobile users.

While the Symbian Foundation may still be working away on Symbian^3 (its not due for completion until the end of this month) it has released a video showcasing the look and feel of the new OS.  The video is really polished, the UI it showcases looks nice.Its just a video of course so whether the reality matches this only time will tell.  The video for the most part showcases the multiple home screen and gesture support of the UI.  The multiple home screens look clean with the ability to organise and manage widgets.  Gestures (swipe, pinch etc) are supported throughout the UI.  The video claims that enhanced multitasking and graphics support will make the OS faster and feel more responsive, addressing another long time complaint of users of the Symbian UI.After viewing the video many commentators have complained that aspects of the Symbian^3 UI appear to be derivative of other platforms.  Like being derivative is a big problem.  I don't claim that my car is derivative just because it has a steering wheel for interacting with it just like every other car.  So when someone comes up with a compelling paradigm for interacting with a device I would expect all other vendors implement it.  Over time you would naturally expect similar devices to converge on certain core hardware/software useability and functionality paradigms and then differentiate themselves around the edges.  Hence we all interact with our cars using the steering whe

A friend pointed me in the direction of a little piece of code behind the official site for the Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy, Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate. This is a screenshot of his website today (click for a larger version):Notice on the right hand sidebar a "tag cloud" with the most discussed topics on that site. Now let's look behind the scenes on the code used to create that "tag cloud":Oh, look... If the topic is "ISP Filtering" then the Hon. Stephen Conroy doesn't want you to know about it. You can still click on any tag though, go to the search page and enter the term "ISP Filtering" to find the content you want, but obviously there shouldn't be any hint that such a topic exists.Now you understand why I think we shouldn't have a national Internet filter in New Zealand. You don't know for sure if any future government would change the rules behind the scenes.(By the way, I hope using the website as an example don't put me on a "persona non grata" list in Australia...)

Some Twitter users reported the account that has been used to post notes of defamatory and sexual harassment nature (as posted here).Those posts were very personal and abusive, including names of employees and some very sick comments.However Twitter support failed to recognise this as a threat and replied with a canned response to those who submitted a support ticket:What a Twitter #fail. I just hope Telecom New Zealand notify the police, and spend some of its lawyers' time to pursue this further.Shame on you Twitter.UPDATE: After some review, the appropriate Twitter team decided to remove that account. Thanks to all involved, and Twitter for reviewing it.

Folks, there's someone on Twitter who doesn't know better and is currently on a harassment campaign against Telecom employees. The tweets are of a personal nature (including comments on female employees and of a sexual nature), highly NSFW. While I firmly support people criticising a company, I think it's wrong to make it personal and go on employees and their personal lives. I also think it's wrong to make it behind anonymous comments. If you are a Twitter user, could you please visit http://twitter.com/deadcaseyjohnsn and click the REPORT SPAM link? Note I am not giving a link here because that page doesn't need Google juice. Also note all tweets are highly NSFW - even the mild ones.

Mobile phone termination rates are under intense scrutiny by the New Zealand telco regulator, the Commerce Commission, which has pressured Vodafone and Telecom into a binding undertaking to lower the amounts charged for landing calls on their networks. It'll be interesting to see if this leads to lowered retail pricing for voice calls, so that people can use their mobile phones a bit more for the purpose they're designed for. Thanks to high call charges, New Zealanders have been weaned off voice calls, something that's apparent mobile usage figures from the GSMA, a mobile telephony industry organisation. For the third quarter of last year, New Zealand is said to have the sixth lowest amount of monthly minutes on average per user, after the Philippines, Cambodia, Sao Tome and Principe, Morocco and Kenya. The global average is 288 minutes according to the GSMA, but New Zealander mobile phone users don't use anywhere near that number. I don't think it's because Kiwis are a taciturn bunch either. While there's some debate as to what MTR regulation or forced  lowering of these will achieve, the ComCom really should get together with its international counterparts in Australia, Asia, the EU and the US and have a think about roaming rates for mobile phones. I was reminded of how high these are by analyst Derek Kerton's story in RCR Wireless recently. Kerton attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and tried his best to avoid getting stung by high roaming rates, but fail

TUANZ blog post of the day says "Impound Reynold's Passport", and Ernie asks the government to retain Telecom New Zealand CEO Paul Reynold's in the country. IANAL, but aside from the fact that no legitimate government would ever keep a foreign citizen's passport with no legal grounds and a judicial order issued on the breach of some law, the headline is sensationalist at best. But then Ernie continues "Reynolds' handling of the crisis this week has been magnificent. He's fronted this issue at every step. He's been direct and honest. He's shown very genuine empathy in talking about the inconvenience, distress and cost the issues have imposed on customers. He hasn't ducked the questions - he's answered, fully and from the heart, every time." Yes, I agree with that sentence. But that headline asking the government to retain someone in the country - the equivalent of arresting someone - without legal proceedings? Seriously? As I said, a sensationalist headline. When I read it on my RSS reader I thought "surely not"?  I understand it's more of a "he's doing a good job, keep him here" and not a "XT is fubar, keep him here"...

Microsoft New Zealand held the preliminary finals for the Imagine Cup 2010 technology competition at its Auckland offices to determine the four teams that will advance to the next stage of competition. A field of 20 teams each pitched projects developed using Microsoft technology to a six-judge panel in hopes of securing a spot in the national final.

With the dual tuner, EyeTV Netstream DTT enables two people to watch and record different TV programmes at the same time on different computers in the house.

MSDN Subscriptions have a MSDN New Zealand team. These are local professionals working in the evangelism and marketing areas: Scott Wylie (Director, Developer & Platform Strategy Team) Nigel Parker (UX Development Advisor) Nathan Mercer (IT Pro Advisor) Mike Zeff (Development Advisor) Ryan Tarak (Academic Developer Advisor) Dean Edwards (Group Marketing Manager) Paul Lo (Audience Marketing) Robert Costello (Group Operations Manager) Daryl Oog (Audience Marketing) Subscribers have access to a comprehensive set of resources including past, present, and future software and tools. With MSDN Subscribers' enhanced support, you can quickly get un-stuck, enabling you to make the right decisions to stay ahead of the curve. The platform gives you room to grow, as you will always have access to the newest technologies. MSDN Subscribers also get other benefits ranging from 3rd party offers to MSDN Subscribers to discounted products and VIP treatment at events. The core of MSDN Subscriptions is the access to a wide variety of software that for development and test purposes. An MSDN Premium Subscriptions gives access to virtually all Microsoft servers and tools. On top of this subscribers get Technical Support Incidents (2 for MSDN Pro, 4 for MSDN Premium), an Online Concierge to help using MSDN Subscription services, Microsoft E-Learning collections, training offers from Microsoft Partners and priority support in MSDN Forums: two-business-day response to forum postings (previously man

OverCache MSP enables Slingshot New Zealand to optimize users' Internet experience with accelerated delivery of P2P and streaming content.

MSDN Subscriptions have many blogs from Microsoft employees worldwide. These blogs put users like yourself in contact with Microsoft people and teams developing the tools we use to create and support applications. The easiest way to follow the blogs is to use RSS feeds to see all blog posts - but if the number of posts is too much, then you can individually select which blogs to follow and grab their unique RSS feeds. Subscribers have access to a comprehensive set of resources including past, present, and future software and tools. With MSDN Subscribers' enhanced support, you can quickly get un-stuck, enabling you to make the right decisions to stay ahead of the curve. The platform gives you room to grow, as you will always have access to the newest technologies. MSDN Subscribers also get other benefits ranging from 3rd party offers to MSDN Subscribers to discounted products and VIP treatment at events. The core of MSDN Subscriptions is the access to a wide variety of software that for development and test purposes. An MSDN Premium Subscriptions gives access to virtually all Microsoft servers and tools. On top of this subscribers get Technical Support Incidents (2 for MSDN Pro, 4 for MSDN Premium), an Online Concierge to help using MSDN Subscription services, Microsoft E-Learning collections, training offers from Microsoft Partners and priority support in MSDN Forums: two-business-day response to forum postings (previously managed newsgroups). Developers interested in the upc

Double-Take Software's System State replication engine creates full image of a server workload in the cloud for rapid recovery.

About 75 percent of organisations worldwide - and 89% in Australia and New Zealand - have suffered a cyber attack.

MSDN Subscriptions have many different forums for peer support. These include MSDN Forums and MSDN Newsgroups. Like in any other forums and newsgroups users can post their questions and receive peer support (provided by other community members) or Microsoft professionals. This also allows users to search on a growing archive of technical questions and answers constantly updated. Subscribers have access to a comprehensive set of resources including past, present, and future software and tools. With MSDN Subscribers' enhanced support, you can quickly get un-stuck, enabling you to make the right decisions to stay ahead of the curve. The platform gives you room to grow, as you will always have access to the newest technologies. MSDN Subscribers also get other benefits ranging from 3rd party offers to MSDN Subscribers to discounted products and VIP treatment at events. The core of MSDN Subscriptions is the access to a wide variety of software that for development and test purposes. An MSDN Premium Subscriptions gives access to virtually all Microsoft servers and tools. On top of this subscribers get Technical Support Incidents (2 for MSDN Pro, 4 for MSDN Premium), an Online Concierge to help using MSDN Subscription services, Microsoft E-Learning collections, training offers from Microsoft Partners and priority support in MSDN Forums: two-business-day response to forum postings (previously managed newsgroups). Developers interested in the upcoming Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 know

The rather pompously titled “Mobile World Congress” (MWC) has come and gone for another year. This event is the successor to the previous GSM Conferences when the European GSM standard was fiercely battling the North American developed CDMA for global mobile supremacy. GSM effectively triumphed in terms of global user numbers although ironically it uses (Wideband) CDMA as the wireless link in its 3G version. Two key reasons that GSM won out were the users’ identity actually being on the SIM card rather than the handset meaning no hassles changing from one phone to another, and the amount of standardisation (GSM is grafted neatly onto ISDN) to aid interoperability which was born out of a desire to have harmonious communications across Europe. Occasionally design by committee produces good results and GSM turned out to scale very well.As an aside, a Lucent engineer told me in 2003 that the U.S. mobile operators instructed their CDMA infrastructure providers to prevent roaming and interoperability between U.S networks so as to stop customers moving from one network to the other. While the Europeans were developing the Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) standard in the 80’s (later Anglecised to ‘Global System for Mobile’) the Americans were busy with the PC revolution and the building blocks for the internet. The (fixed) internet and mobile voice both exploded from the late 90’s.However these two worlds were on a collision course with

New Symbian-based handset will be available in versions compatible with Vodafone and Telecom 3G networks.

New General Manager Jyoti was formerly the general manager of Alcatel-Lucent's Next Generation Networks product unit.

Today I've noticed this ad in one of our pages (already blocked the advertiser of course): It sounds too good to be true, right? First you have to realise that 028 is not a free number (I have blanked out the rest of their 028 number). So while you might get a "free" call to some country, you still have to pay the call to their access number. New Zealand 028 numbers are charged like mobile phone calls, so they are not cheap. In these cases it might actually be cheaper to simply call the international number from your mobile. Unless you too have an 028 number, supplied by 2talk. Calls from 028 numbers to other 028 numbers are free - this is the best case scenario.As pointed out by Steve in the comments, here is the catch: the company can carry very cheap calls to international destinations, but instead of offering a free access number in New Zealand, it offers a 028 number, which is charged at mobile rates - so they make money on the difference.As I said, it might be cheaper to just use your mobile to call those international destinations instead.

This just in from the Commerce Commission... basically it will recommend to the Minster that he accept the Undertakings offered by Telecom and Vodafone.It's a split decision, but still goes in favour of the Undertakings ahead of direct regulation itself.The Commission's press release is available in full here.Quote from Dr Patterson: “I have concluded that both regulation and acceptance of the final undertakings would address the competition concerns that the Commission identified. In my view, the long-term interest of consumers will best be served by applying the least intrusive means to address the competition concerns identified in the investigation. This will allow market forces to continue to operate in areas outside the scope of intervention.” “The final undertakings from Vodafone and Telecom have offered mobile termination rates that are significantly lower than those offered in earlier undertakings. While these rates remain above the range of the Commission’s cost-based benchmarks, they address the competition concerns identified by the Commission, and my recommendation is that they be accepted by the Minister,” said Dr Patterson.UPDATE:This is Vodafone's release on the announcement:Vodafone welcomes Commerce Commission recommendationVodafone welcomes the Commerce Commission recommendation to accept the industry's commitment to reduce Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs).The Commission has recommended the Minister of Communications accept

Adobe Photoshop turns 20 on 19th Feb 2010. The impact of Photoshop is everywhere – billboard signs, magazine covers, major motion pictures, even the logo on the coffee cup you drink out of every morning. All have likely been touched by the software. Adobe says over 90 percent of creative professionals have Photoshop on their desktops and today Photoshop is used by professional photographers, graphic designers and advertisers, as well as architects, engineers and even doctors. Back in 1987, Thomas Knoll developed a pixel imaging program called Display. It was a simple program to showcase grayscale images on a black-and-white monitor. However, after collaborating with his brother John Knoll, the two began adding features that made it possible to process digital image files. The program eventually caught the attention of industry influencers, and in 1988, Adobe made the decision to license the software, naming it Photoshop, and shipping the first version in 1990. Over its 20-year history, Photoshop has evolved significantly from a simple original display program to a popular application that has over 10 million users worldwide. Here is the team discussing the original Adobe Photoshop 1.0: And here Kevin Connor, Adobe's Vice President of Product Management, talking about how Photoshop has impacted the world:

Companies have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal.

Consumers will be able to download Mobility Radeon driver updates directly from AMD instead of waiting for OEM releases.

Last year I posted a few Geekzone Browser and OS stats, mainly as a response for a request from NBR's Chris Keall. I just thought looking at the numbers early in the year (and later again this year) will be fun, so here are a couple of interesting numbers charts/tables. We are looking at numbers from more than 700,000 unique visitors in a 30 day period. First is the % of browser by visits to Geekzone and I am surprised that both Internet Explorer and Firefox are down. A few months ago Firefox passed Internet Explorer as the most used browser to access Geekzone, but now they are both in the same % level - and both down. Not surprising is Google Chrome, which seems to be up 100% since the last time I looked at it:   Just for an idea, of those using Internet Explorer, 59.40% use IE8, 26.89% use IE7 and 13.65% still use IE6. Next is the % of Operating System by visits to Geekzone. I haven't published these numbers before, so I can't compare. There's a distinct lack of mobile browsers here since we launched the Geekzone Mobile and we automatically redirect those mobile users to the new site. But no surprises here:   Now let's look at Geekzone mobile, which runs on its own domain and obviously has a much smaller user base - we are talking about 30,000 unique visits a month. First the distribution of mobile Operating System:   And now another interesting one, the distribution of users through mobile network access (although I have no idea where Google got that "S

After the (small) glitch affecting SMS services on Telecom XT this week I asked their people for an update and here it is: Obviously the reason we're doing the [external] review is to ask those questions - what's going on/where is the problem - but there's also a whole lot of planned work going on at the same time as the review is underway. Naturally the results of the review will feed into this, but we're getting on with things in the meantime, all of which will help to improve user experience. Paul talked a fair bit about this at our Q2 results last week, here's a summary of what he discussed at the results preso: . We're increasing the RNC processor capacity. We're regularly installing updates to the software to improve resilience. We also had some things in the plan as the number subscribers on the network grew. This is all going to occur over the next few months which will further improve resilience and the customer experience. We'll also be adding two more RNCs by March - another one in CHCH and another one in AKL. We're adding more fibre backhaul. We're adding more cell sites, and we're amplifying some cell sites too Alongside that we've gone absolutely microscopic on the operational management of the network, which is being continually monitored right down to cell site by cell site level at the very highest levels of the company. As Paul's said - XT was built to be a world class network and that's what it needs to be - we're determined to get it there and it's absol

Microsoft has removed the wraps from one of its most guarded secrets, unveiling Windows Phone 7 Series, an operating system for mobile that promises to make it easier to work through your mobile and social life. While the company has demonstrated the software, we can't buy any handset yet because those are still at least nine months away. Windows Phone Series 7 introduces Hubs that guide you through different use cases. In each Hub you can browse through it and change how you see information. Data is constantly updated in the background - your music, photos or social networks are constantly updated, with this being reflected in the tiles. The new phone also ditches the old ActiveSync (Windows XP) and Windows Mobile Device Center (Windows Vista and Windows 7) in favour or Zune software. And Microsoft promised Zune Marketplace will be available wherever Windows Phone 7 Series is officially sold. This is a move from an application centric interface to a more activities and social centric interface. Will it work well? Who knows, as I said an actual product is still nine months away. Developers will get a lot more information at MIX10. Does it mean the death of Windows Mobile as we know it today? It appears not, according to istartedsomething, that reports both Windows Phone 7 Series and the current Windows Mobile will co-exist. I also received some interesting information today that points in that direction. For example people buying apps from the Marketplace for Windows Mobile

The IPX 365 IPX Voice service combines a MPLS IP global networks with call control provided by TNZI softswitch, and supported by its expertise in the international voice business.